For you and I, normal is normal. For the true believers in the Citadel, normal is antirevolutionary. Normal is heresy. Their normal is our strange. Think children of The Hate Man who believed he wasn’t absurd enough.
Enter Síné, shortened from Sine Qua Non. Síné, pronounced Shin‑nay, wants a better normal. She is the daughter of Vexton Ulyth, Primaris Solenne of the Citadel, and Marisol Quyen. Ulyth is a mutt, with mostly Scotts and Irish in his ancestry. This makes Síné mixed—Mandarin, Japanese, and Dutch.
But she can’t be born in Pacific Cascadia and raised in Walnut Creek. Her hair has to be straight, black, and thick. She must have Asian eyes. She shall be 155cm and weigh 50km. Sine shall not speak English, ever. It must be Mandarin, periodt. Last, she must recite memorized sacred scripture from 毛泽东 before eating breakfast. Sine is none of those things.
She is 5’7 and 140lbs. with the frame of her father’s Scots-Irish ancestry. Her auburn hair doesn’t take dying well. Her eyes are too Western. And though she obeys the Mandarin rule in their presence, KAOS and the Citadel’s true believers still look at her and feel aggrieved.
为革命！
Síné’s opinion on all this? “I ain’t that and I ain’t doing that.” Heresy! Absolute HERESY! This princess of the realm, this golden daughter of the Dear Leader, must comply. Yeah, well . . . good luck with that.
Síné is born and raised in Walnut Creek until Dad decided to quit his job at PG&E for the revolution. He sold their house and bought a one bedroom condominum in Berkeley’s Ocean View. Her bedroom was a corner of the living room marked by Communist Chinese red flags held up by clothes pins and broom sticks jammed into barbell weights. Dad was against the former USA’s 2nd Amendment. And kept a home-built AR-15 by the front door. Because MAGA radicals, am I right?
Dad got progressively weird. Mom had to wear the clothes he picked for her. She couldn’t make groceries, rooTech had to do it. There was no land in which to garden. Their condo was on the 15th floor of a housing tower. The PEEPUL (Pacific Cascadia) owned the land around the towers and gardens were forbidden. Dad kept repeating, “it’s for the revolution!”
Fall and Rise
Perceived threats to values, resources . . . I’ll stop at resources. Marisol Ulyth, back then tried to keep the family stable while Dad galavanted around the collapsing USA celebrating its fall. They had savings but revolution is expensive. And anyway, isn’t stable housing, utility bills paid, and property tax anti-revolutionary?
Revolutionary is struggle and struggle is hard. Within a year the collapse of USA was complete. Victory! And chaos because the infrastructure that supported Marisol and Sine also collapsed. Turns out tearing it down is a lot easier than operating it. Doh.
Vexton and Marisol argued, bitterly, over eviction notices, cut off notices, empty cupboards and reposessed refrigerators. How was Sine supposed to get to school? There was church food but that was suboptimal. “But the church is bougie so it should pay its fair share,” landed like a slap in the face. Reality sucks.
Amen and AMEN
Vexton, for whatever reason, declared First Pres Berkeley to be the most bougie, most evil. Whatever. The weekend Marisol left him with Sine in tow, that church was hosting a VBS event. Marisol demanded a little resource safety and Ulyth slapped her, saying safety was a deeply anti-revolutionary sin.
A rooTech taxi showed up for Marisol and Sine and that was that. Marisol’s phone blew up with epic accusations of abuse, verbal violence, all sorts of *isms and *ists, all against her. And then loving words that if she’d just come home Vexton would make everything right. The marriage was past that.
The first move was to First Pres Berkeley and VBS. A big act of kindness that tested great love walking into Vacation Bible School with great need. Wrong time, wrong place. But one of the volunteers had an idea—sell apples in the parking lot of the former Ashby BART station. FPB gave Marisol and Sine a boxed lunch. AMEN began.
And Then . . .
And then Síné became a teenager.
Before that, though, her Mom defected and she went home. The Citadel rose to fill the gaps in governance left by the collapse of the USA. Defecting is volunteering for misery. The first week was crashing on a stranger’s couch and roasting in the Bay Area sun while selling produce at the old Ashby BART station parking lot.
Being down for the struggle is revolutionary. Síné was down… sort of. She liked her Dad. Mom bolting and defecting was a whole her thing. After a couple weeks of couch surfing and choking down that Nourish slop, the homesickness hit different. Real different. So she ordered a car and went home.
The door flew open before she even finished climbing the steps. There was Liza — full chaos-gremlin energy — eyes wide like she’d been mainlining energy drinks and worry.
“Síné Non!!! Omigosh welcome back bestie!!! We were literally DYING, like full-on spiraling in the group chat!!! Are you okayyyyy?! Did you survive that sus cult kidnap attempt by the church squad?! I would’ve been straight-up terrified, like hiding under the blankets crying emoji rain, no cap!!! Come here let me hug you till your ribs file a complaint!!!”
Ugh. Smother has entered the chat, Síné thought, letting herself get pulled into the death-grip squeeze anyway. She’s one more exclamation point away from turning into a human glitter bomb.
Still… it felt kinda good. Annoying, but good. Like slipping back into a hoodie that still smelled like home.
“Chill, Liza… I’m good. For real. No church cult got me. Just… a lot of vibes I’m still buffering.”
Liza didn’t let go. Of course she didn’t. Classic Smother.
Queen for Life
“How is Dad?” asked Síné. “He’s good. He’s resting. You can see him later when he’s up,” replied Liza. “Ok.” It had hit her yet. Damian was serving time in Willow Camp. Ulyth faded after the stroke and the creeping dementia. And Síné had no idea the five KAOS members were already watching her like she was the new queen they needed..
All Síné felt right then was exhaustion and a weird relief at being smothered. The place Mom had been staying at only had a stand-up shower with lukewarm water and discount-store soap. She showered anyway, threw on fleece pants and her old Cal Berkeley t-shirt. Felt a little more human.
Joy. Just in time, “You can’t wear that.” This from Sara, Dad’s administrative bitch. Sara had a rule for the weather that it seldom obeyed. “Can’t wear what?”
“That!” Sara gestured at her like she was radioactive. “Where’s the grievance branding? The kink? The malady-and-addiction vibe? The whole ‘Gawd is unalived’ energy??”
“Not here, CLEARLY! Leave me alone, ok!” Here we go. Liza’s face did that thing where it ran through like six different expressions before landing on full outrage. “If your dad saw you dressed like that he’d literally have a stroke!”
Fashy Disaster
“Síné Qua Non, you will dress properly! You know the rules! Go back to your room and change!” Sara snapped.
Not that long ago, Síné would’ve just changed into the proper KAOS-approved outfit — that whole goth vibe mixed with gender-fluid signals and all the right orthodox flair.
But after being with her Mom, she’d tasted the outside world… and it was good. Here she was in her auburn hair, average build, and zero flair: plain white “Zero F*cks to Give” t-shirt, jeans, and Converse All-Stars. No one stared. No one started arguments. She didn’t have to give a land acknowledgement or declare her pronouns every time she introduced herself. One girl at the church had even seen the shirt slogan and straight-up high-fived her.
General Quarters
Sara lost it, “YOU CANNOT, EVER, EVER, EVER, DEFY ME! I RUN THIS HOUSE! I MAKE THE RULES! SO SAYS THE SOLENNE PRIMARIS AND SO SHALL IT BE!”
Síné didn’t even flinch. “Yeah, I can. I just did.” She shrugged. “Tell you what — let’s go talk to my Dad.”
“That’s not possible.”
“Why not? You said he was resting and I could talk to him when he’s up. Is he up?”
“Can I tell you something? Something important?”
The air in Síné’s fury left the chat. Sara was never this indirect, “Sure, anything.”
“Come with me,” The two women went through a door to a stairwell, down two flights, and into a room Sine had never seen. It was a shrine to her father, with an art nouveau door frame on the east wall. The door was a velvet curtain decorated with gold satin Chinese characters, “怨恨赋生命， 情癖悦灵魂， 疾患养坚韧， 沉瘾抚慰特权病魂， 无神论昭示真相：上帝已死，且白人杀死了祂。” The room’s walls were black granite and had black granite floors. It had a mausoleum vibe.
Death Kindly Stopped for Him
“What is this?” asked Sine.
“He’s gone, Síné. Walk through the curtain. You can say goodby to him.”
One era in Síné’s life ended, another began for her with steps through a curtain to see her Dad in his sarcophagus. Death is normal As is traversing the stages of grief that lay ahead for Síné.
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